FORA.tv Speaker - Machtelt Israels

Biography

A lecturer at the University of Amsterdam, Machtelt Israëls specializes in Italian Renaissance art and publishes and lectures on the function, technique, patronage, and meaning of painting in Tuscany. She was a fellow at Harvard's Villa I Tatti in 2004-05, for which she recently completed a volume on Sassetta's Borgo San Sepolcro altarpiece. She contributed to the catalogues for the exhibitions Da Jacopo della Quercia a Donatello. Le arti a Siena nel Rinascimento (2010) and La primavera del Rinascimento. La scultura e le arti a Firenze (spring 2013), as well as the recently opened Piero della Francesca in America at The Frick Collection in New York. She has written a monograph forthcoming on Sassetta and (with Carl Brandon Strehlke) the catalogue of the paintings in the Berenson Collection at Villa I Tatti in Florence. Born in Amsterdam, Israëls was educated in art history, chemistry, and conservation of works of art before receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam with the dissertation "Sassetta's Madonna della Neve: An Image of Patronage."